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Section: Partnerships and Cooperations
International Initiatives
Inria Associate Teams
PLOMO
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Title: Customizable Tools and Infrastructure for Software Development and Maintenance
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Inria principal investigator: Stéphane Ducasse
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International Partner:
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Duration: 2011 - 2013
Project Description
Software maintenance is the process of maintaining a software system by removing bugs, fixing performance issues and adapting it to keep it useful and competitive in an ever-changing environment [44] . Performing effective software maintenance and development is best achieved with effective tool support, provided by a variety of tools, each one presenting a specific kind of information supporting the task at hand [47] . The goal of PLOMO is to develop new meta tools to improve and bring synergy in the existing infrastructure of Pharo (for software development) and the Moose software analysis platform (for software maintenance).
PLOMO will (1) enhance the Opal open compiler infrastructure to support plugin definition, (2) offer an infrastructure for change and event tracking as well as model to compose and manipulate them, (3) work on a layered library of algorithms for the Mondrian visualization engine of Moose, (4) work on new ways of profiling applications. All the efforts will be performed on Pharo http://www.pharo-project.org and Moose http://www.moosetechnology.org/ , two platforms heavily used by the RMoD and PLEIAD team.
The outcomes of PLOMO will include new research advances in the field of (i) bytecode generation for dynamic language; (ii) change and event tracking; (iii) software visualization engine; (iv) agile profiling framework. These four topics are recurrently considered by the most prestigious and competitive conferences (e.g., ECOOP, OOPSLA, FSE, ESEC, ICSE, TOOLS) and journals (e.g., TSE, TOPLAS, ASE), to which the participants of the PLOMO project are used to publish.
A strong focus on publishing our results in relevant scientific forum will remain a top priority. The artifacts produced by PLOMO will strongly reinforce the Pharo programming language and the Moose software analysis platform. The development and progress of Pharo is structured by RMoD, which has successfully created a strong and dynamic community. Moose is being used to realize consulting activities and it is used as a research platform in about 10 Universities, worldwide. We expect PLOMO to have a strong impact in both the software products and the communities structured around them.
Publications
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S. Ducasse, M. Oriol, A. Bergel, Challenges to support automated random testing for dynamically typed languages [17]
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J. Fabry, A. Kellens, S. Denier, S. Ducasse. AspectMaps: A Scalable Visualization of Join Point Shadows [18]
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Romain Robbes, Johan Fabry, Marcus Denker, DIE: A Domain Specific Aspect Language for IDE Events, in submission
Research Visits
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Vanessa Pena and A. Bergel, Aug 15 until Aug 20. From Aug 20 until Aug 28 they attended ESUG 2011, a conference co-organized by RMoD.
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Romain Robbes from July 18 until July 24.
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Esteban Allende from July 19 until October 2. Esteban's stays is founded by the French Embassy in Chile. He received a grant of 3180 euros.
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Marcus Denker visited Chile Nov 7th-28th.
Visits of International Scientists
Dr. Andy Kellens from the VUB is visiting us during 3 months.
In the context of the PLOMO associated Team with the University of Chile we got three visitors over a period of one week (V. Pena, A. Bergel, R. Robbes). Esteban Allende, a PhD Student from Pleiad University of Chile, visited from July-Sept 2011.
Internships
RMoD hosted students for internships:
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Javier Pimas, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sept.-Dec. 2011
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Guido Chari, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sept.-Dec. 2011
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Cesar Couto, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, Dec. 2011-Fev. 2012 as part of the Pequi project (see 8.4.3.2 )
Participation In International Programs
STICAmsud
This project focuses on software remodularization. Aspects, Traits and Classboxes are proved software mechanisms to provide modules in software applications. However, reenginering-based methodologies using these mechanisms have not yet been explored so far. This project intends to show how visualization and clustering techniques (such as Formal Concept Analysis) are useful to cope with the comprehension and transformation of module-based applications to applications which could use these mechanisms (i.e. aspects, traits, classboxes). The research results will be applied in a common reenginering platform MOOSE to show the applicability of the concepts.
CoReA spans three research institutions: Inria (the Lille Nord Europe research center, France), University of Chile (Santiago, Chile), LIFIA - Universidad Nacional de La Plata (La Plata, Argentina). The three national project leaders are Dr. Gabriela Arévalo (LIFIA - UNLP), Dr. Alexandre Bergel (Inria), Prof. Dr. Johan Fabry (University of Chile). The international coordinator is Dr. Alexandre Bergel. Participants are: Prof. Dr. Eric Tanter (University of Chile), and Dr. Stéphane Ducasse (senior scientist at Inria).
Marcus Denker visited Argentina November 3rd to November 5th, 2011.
Project Pequi – Inria/CNPq Brésil
The Pequi project is a collaboration between Professor Marco T. Valente's team at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil and the RMoD team. It focuses in producing Metrics, Techniques, and Tools for Software Remodularization.
It is recognized that software systems must be continuously maintained and evolved to remain useful. However, ongoing maintenance over the years contributes to degrade the quality of a system. Thus reengineering activities, including remodularization activities, are necessary to restore or enhance the maintainability of the systems. To help in the remodularization of software systems, the project will be structured in two main research lines in which both teams have experience and participation: (i) Evaluation and Characterization of Metrics for Software Remodularization; and (ii) Tools and Techniques for Removal of Architectural Violations.
The project started in July 2011 with a visit of Dr. Nicolas Anquetil to the brazilian team. The project will last 24 months.